Legal basis

Common law policing powers; DPA 2018 Part 3

Oversight

Force pilot evaluation, due to report after the pilot ends in November 2026

A time-limited trial running from February 2026 to November 2026, first deployed at London Bridge and extended to the London Underground with a deployment at Victoria station on 11 August 2026. The effectiveness evidence here is the most striking thing about this entry, and stands in sharp contrast to the Metropolitan Police's figures for the same technology family. Across 18 deployments between February and July 2026, British Transport Police logged more than 530,000 faces scanned, zero true matches, no arrests attributable to LFR, and one confirmed false alert at King's Cross on 24 February. The Met, by comparison, reported 173 arrests from roughly 470,000 faces at Croydon over a broadly comparable period. That divergence is worth recording plainly rather than resolving: the same class of technology, deployed by two forces in the same country in the same year, has produced radically different yields. Watchlist composition and deployment siting are the obvious candidate explanations, but neither force has published enough for that to be more than inference. The identification of the engine as NEC NeoFace M40 rests on secondary reporting rather than a BTP or NEC primary document.

Source: British Transport Police published information on its LFR pilot · last checked 2026-08-25

Legal basis

No dedicated statute. Governing authority is now R (Thompson and Carlo) v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis (High Court, 21 April 2026), read with R (Bridges) v South Wales Police (Court of Appeal, 2020).

Oversight

Force LFR policy documents; ICO engagement

In Thompson the High Court dismissed a judicial review brought by Shaun Thompson and Big Brother Watch's Silkie Carlo, upholding the Met's 2024 LFR policy as lawful and compatible with Article 8 and data protection law. Any account of UK live facial recognition citing only Bridges is now stale. Deployed at targeted operations rather than continuously, with published deployment records and arrest figures. The force says it has arrested more than 2,000 people using LFR since the start of 2024. The deployment model is changing materially. The Croydon fixed-camera pilot, running October 2025 to May 2026, produced 173 arrests from more than 470,000 passers-by with one false alert on the Met's own figures. In June 2026 the Met confirmed fixed LFR cameras would be installed in the West End and Soho before the end of 2026, with six further areas during 2027, and in August 2026 the Mayor of London indicated the Oxford Street cameras would become permanent. This is a shift from mobile, targeted, time-limited deployments towards standing infrastructure, and is arguably a more significant development than any single deployment figure. Use is spreading nationally: Statewatch's June 2026 survey recorded 12 forces using LFR, with trade reporting citing 13 of 43; treat the figure as at least 12 to 13 forces as of mid-2026 and rising. The Home Office announced 40 additional LFR vans in January 2026. First protest use came in May 2026. An investigation by Liberty Investigates and The Times found children had featured at least 1,600 times on live facial recognition watchlists across six forces, including children as young as 12; the UK Joint Committee on Human Rights has formally questioned the Home Secretary about it. Research by London Assembly Member Zoe Garbett found over half of London deployments took place in areas with a higher proportion of Black residents than the city average.

Source: Metropolitan Police LFR publications · last checked 2026-08-25

Legal basis

Common law; considered in R (Bridges) v South Wales Police

Oversight

Court of Appeal judgment 2020 required changes to policy

Deployed for public events including Six Nations rugby fixtures, with continued operations through 2026 including the Swansea Airshow in July 2026 and deployments in Cardiff and Pontypridd in June and July 2026. R (Bridges) v South Wales Police remains the governing appellate authority on this force's use and has not been disturbed. The force has spent roughly £3.5m on the programme, with false alert rates falling over time on its own figures. Separately, South Wales Police has trained over 500 officers to use a handheld facial recognition mobile app, making it a significant operator-initiated facial recognition deployment as well as a live one. The Liberty Investigates and Times investigation into children on facial recognition watchlists found South Wales Police had placed 632 people under 18 on its watchlists since 2022, including six children under 13. The force's own guidance states no one under 13 should be included, and the College of Policing notes the technology performs less reliably on younger children.

Source: R (Bridges) v Chief Constable of South Wales Police [2020] EWCA Civ 1058 · last checked 2026-08-25

Legal basis

No dedicated Canadian federal statute governing police facial recognition

Oversight

Not disclosed in available reporting

Toronto Police Service uses NEC's NeoFace Reveal to compare an image obtained during a criminal investigation against lawfully obtained booking photographs. Candidate images are reviewed by a trained facial recognition analyst before being supplied to investigators for further review. This entry was previously classified on this tracker as live facial recognition. That was wrong, and the correction matters beyond this single entry: retrospective image-to-mugshot searching and live scanning of passers-by are different technologies with different legal and civil liberties profiles, and conflating them inflates the apparent scale of live facial recognition deployment. The force's own published AI inventory identifies NeoFace Reveal as a high-risk AI technology, and Toronto operates an AI governance framework through the Toronto Police Services Board.

Source: Biometric Update · last checked 2026-08-25

Legal basis

No national biometric surveillance framework exists in Australia. Western Australia's Privacy and Responsible Information Sharing Act 2024 is the first Australian law directly governing personal information in automated decision-making.

Oversight

State privacy watchdog was not consulted before the trial launched, according to advocacy groups

That Act requires WA Police to show how bias, harm and discrimination risks are managed, and each deployment requires an authorising superintendent to record why the operation is necessary and proportionate. Australia's first police use of live facial recognition to locate persons of interest, running as a trial from 22 June 2026 in Perth and Mandurah. A clearly marked van scans the faces of people it passes and compares them against a watchlist of about 4,000 people: outstanding arrest warrants, reportable offenders, people under lawful exclusion orders, and missing persons. Unmatched faces are pixellated on the operator screen and the biometric data deleted immediately. An officer must review any alert before acting, and WA Police state that an algorithmic match alone cannot justify an arrest. In the first week more than 130,000 faces were scanned, producing 33 alerts and 18 arrests. The oversight arrangements are contested and that contest is part of the record. The state privacy watchdog was reportedly excluded from the process. Academic commentary notes there are no pre-defined success criteria and no independent evaluator, with WA Police both running the trial and compiling its results. The Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia says it was given 20 minutes' notice before launch, and its legal services director has said the trial site locations could only have been chosen by design rather than chance, a characterisation police deny.

Source: ABC News · last checked 2026-08-25